POEM FOR ISAAC

You asked me why we left Providence;
I said, 'I don’t know' - so we talked about
other things while I carried your sister
in a sling, breasts leaking milk across my front;
through Christ Church Meadow to Christmas lights
on Broad Street, the covered market, coffee
from a stall facing the butchers; sat staring
at all that blood - carcasses of hare, deer hung
by the door. You asked me how the world got made
then; I laughed, grateful for a question I could
answer; no Gods to fall back on, told you
about the noiseless explosion - planets scattering
across all that darkness. You asked again
why we left, again I said 'I don’t know'.